Omaha and more

As good as the Jellies exhibit at the Shedd

We spent last weekend in the city my parents were raised in and I grew up visiting during my summer vacations--Omaha, Nebraska. We were there because my cousin's daughter Lindsay was having her bat mitzvah. Since Ada and Zoe have only two first cousins (and those two live in Australia), I've tried to expose them to their second and third cousins as much as possible.

And I kind of like Omaha. For one thing, the Henry Doorly Zoo is fantastic. We (along with my mom and stepdad) headed there directly from the airport and took in the desert, swamp and aquarium exhibits.


We did some other sightseeing too, visiting the Durham Museum (an old train station filled with exhibits on Omaha history and a bunch of really cool historic rail cars that had the girls lost in a complicated game of "let's pretend") and the Omaha Children's Museum.

Naturally there were plenty of bat mitzvah-related events too: services, a 13th birthday dinner, more services, an oneg, a bat mitzvah party at a diner and a farewell brunch. Lindsay chanted beautifully and led many of the prayers, but I was most impressed by her d'var Torah, the commentary she gave on her Torah portion, which was about leprosy. She talked about the importance of making everyone feel a part  of a community and related that to her service project, which was assisting the disabled with swimming lessons.

"When's the train going to come?"

This was also the first hotel stay in which we didn't play musical beds! Zoe and Ada shared a double bed, and so did Josh and I. (P.S. The Marriott Omaha has very comfortable beds.) The girls deserve an extra commendation for their ability to stay up late and haul their own luggage. We didn't land until 8:30pm Sunday night, and they gamely wheeled their suitcases through the terminal, onto the tram to remote parking and then onto the bus to extra cheap remote parking.

In other, completely unrelated news, Ada is a reader! I'm going to post a video of her reading a book soon, I promise. While Zoe was a teeny bit younger when she started reading, I just realized that both of them started 1-2 months before the end of their second year at Montessori preschool.

Also, we booked a Disney World vacation for the fall. It will be my second time to WDW and the first for Zoe and Ada. We haven't told them yet, so please help us keep this a secret.

The Simon family reunion and road trip

Until I received a save-the-date letter many months ago, I didn't even know I was a Simon. But the leadership of the Omaha Steaks Company, two Simon brothers, organized a large family reunion for all of the decendants of my great-great-great-grandfather Lazar, a Lithuanian Jew who married three--possibly four--times and whose grandchildren moved to the Council Bluffs-Omaha area around 1905. Two of his grandkids, cousins even though the didn't share the same grandmother, married each other and raised my great-grandma May, whom I was named after (I was Alma May before I married).

We just got back from the family reunion, which was a pretty classy affair. Instead of a picnic in the park and matching t-shirts, we were treated to two breakfasts at the Marriott and an after-hours (steak) dinner at the Strategic Air and Space Museum. I got to meet 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousins from California, Boulder, Israel, Virginia, New York, Illinois and Texas--plus a whole lot of Omahans. In fact, it appears I'm related to a sizable chunk of the Omaha Jewish population.

My Aunt Susie put us up in her basement since my mom and Rick were also staying there for the reunion. It was surprisingly comfortable, but my kids never settle down well when we're traveling, so we played musical beds for three nights, exploring every combination of sleeping companions and not sleeping all that well thanks to whining, kicking and A falling out of bed and biting open her lip. I think Josh described sharing a bed with A akin to sleeping with a hot, sweaty, urine-smelling leech, and he's pretty much on the money.

We also learned a few things about long road trips with kids, this being the first time we've driven both kids more than 150 miles from home. Lesson number one: if you've spent 30 minutes pre-packaging healthy-ish snack foods into a grocery sack, you shouldn't leave it on the kitchen counter. Lesson number two: the keys to backseat contentment are snacks, toys, books, The Wiggles, and a 2-screen DVD player. But mostly snacks.

On the way to Omaha we drove slowly, stopping in the Quad Cities to visit a playground along the Mississippi River and overnighting at a hotel with a pool just outside Iowa City. We had the world's largest cinnamon roll at the Machine Shed in Des Moines, which is just outside the entrance to Living History Farms, an amazing site with working farms from early Iowan history and a restored town from 1875. I wish I could have spent all day there instead of 3 hours.


We drove straight home after brunch on Sunday, only stopping to visit the Des Moines Botanical Center and eat a lunch of coal-fired pizzas and salad at Centro. When we were less than an hour from home, we pulled off I-88 in North Aurora. There we stepped into what might be the biggest grocery store I've ever stepped foot into to pick up some basic groceries and put the kids in their pajamas. Seriously, the place was the size of a Home Depot. It took 10 minutes to walk from the entrance to the dairy case. And there were three aisles of breakfast cereal!

More photos from our trip can be seen here.

Another post about Omaha

This is for my Omaha relatives. Aunt Susie, feel free to share it with your friends at the Omaha World-Herald.

Oh Omaha!

Josh, Z and I had a wonderful time in Omaha. Why Omaha? Because that's where my maternal grandmother lives, as well as an aunt and uncle, my first cousin Ann and her family. Grandma Lorraine was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, and her diagnosis prompted our visit, but she seemed to be in great shape, if a bit frail.

Z loved--LOVED--her weekend, particularly everything involving Ann's children Lindsay and Robbie, 7 and 5 respectively. Lindsay in particular doted on Z, and she imitated the big kids' every move, learning how to "be a hummingbird," among other things.

Another highlight of our stay was "Nebraska's #1 attraction," the Henry Doorly Zoo. We only scratched the surface of their many attractions, seeing the Desert Dome (the world's largest indoor desert!), the Aquarium and the Jungle. We bought tickets for the 3-D IMAX movie about underwater life, but mere seconds after the credits started rolling, Z cried, "I'm scared! This is too scary! Wanna go bye-bye!" We let Josh stay, and he said it was fantastic, but definitely not for little kids. (So much for the wisdom of the ticket seller.)
Check out a few more photos from our trip here.

2009: A year in review

In January we visited my mom and stepdad and I came back to work only to watch my former Ogilvy colleagues announce their joblessness on Facebook.

We endured the sights and screams of a local indoor water park and I went to Las Vegas by myself twice in February and March, first for a work-related convention and then to speak on a panel of mombloggers.

Josh and I flew to New York City for a friend's wedding and ate our way across Manhattan, and a few weeks later Josh and Z took a daddy-daughter trip to visit his sister in Leeds, England.

April highlights included my first ever clothing swap party, Bring Your Kids to Work day and another trip to the Big Apple, this time to start planning P&G's Team USA Olympic sponsorship.

In May A claimed Stella for her BFF (they're still thick as thieves). We celebrated Mother's Day with an unnecessary overnight at Starved Rock State Park, delighted in the reopening of our local playground and rocked out at the WSMS 2oth Anniversary block party.

June brought me to the sexiest strip mall nightclub in Dallas and to the local pool, where I inavertently took a bath in baby shit. I turned 33 and Z became a reader--at the tender age of 4!

In July Josh and I celebrated our 10th anniversary and A's second birthday. I answered pointed questions from Z about human reproduction and spoke with a Channel 2 reporter about the blogola and the mommybloggers who accept it. (You can find the televised interview here.)

We road-tripped it to Omaha, Nebraska for a family reunion in August, where I learned I'm related to the Omaha Steaks people and A potty trained herself. We also did a little local tourism, spending a day on the beach on Chicago's lakefront and enjoying one last trip to Kiddieland before the beloved, old-time theme park closed for good.

Z started her third and final year at WSMS in September, doing a full day (8:30-2:30) of academics. Having mastered reading over the summer break, she quickly accelerated into learning parts of speech (the kid can identify nouns, verbs, prepositions and the like!), mathematics and geography. She also started an extracurricular art class, which she's really enjoyed.

October brought multiple Halloween costume changes, H1N1 vaccines for the kids and the mini kitchen remodel we'd been dreaming of since we moved here in 2003, while November featured Z's fifth birthday party (an almost-sleepover hosted at home) and our long-anticipated trip to Australia. It was a bittersweet time for pet ownership as well; we said goodbye to Silver and Tallulah and brought home a new, kid-loving kitten, Oscar.

In December I flew to Los Angeles to do research and took the family East to see our relatives (and try on my wedding dress). In one busy week, I attended two holiday parties, interviewed the creator Yummie Tummie, jumped up and down on the glass ledge on the top of Willis Tower and saw three movies--The Princess and the Frog, Up in the Air and Avatar.

Still reading? Then you get to hear about my New Year's brunch. The one that 64 people RSVPed for. More than 50, but less than 60 showed up for bagels, mimosa, fruit, muffins, spinach strata and overnight French toast, but it was actually completely manageable. Fun, even. I just may make this an annual event!

Looking back on this year-end summary, I'm realizing I spent a fair amount of time on airplanes and in airports--and I'm not even including three overnight trips to Cincinnati.

Photo taken by Z 2 days ago

O! for Omaha

Just one week after we returned from Omaha, the Chicago Tribune honored my favorite Nebraska city with a feature story on the front page of the Travel section.

I guess I'm a real Midwesterner now

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
The Inland North
Boston
North Central
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Makes sense, I suppose. I moved to Chicago from Northern Virginia fourteen years ago, but I was raised in the D.C. area (and overseas) by a couple who met in high school in Omaha, Nebraska.

Goodbye Grandma

My Martini Grandma passed away this morning. It's sad news to start my birthday with, but it's what she wanted, so for that I'm relieved. We'll be in Omaha for the funeral.

Pretty much potty trained

A, drinking water at a restaurant in Iowa. We visited that toilet at least twice.

Now I finally understand pull-up diapers. When Z was being potty trained, it was a parent-led affair. We waited until she was 2 1/2, circled a day on the calendar and called it "no more diapers day." We literally gave away Z's diapers and offered her Princess Pull-Ups only at nap and nighttime. There were tears. There were bribes. There wasn't any turning back.

A, on the other hand, started showing some interest in the potty exactly one month ago, a day after she turned 2. We were at Irazu, remember? Since then, she's been going with more and more regularity. No trip to the park or the pool or someone else's house is complete without a "pee-pee in da potty."

Since our trip to Omaha was chock full of OPP (other people's potties), A only wet her diapers at night. And with all those trips in and out of unfamiliar bathroom stalls, and all that undressing and balancing and redressing, I really learned to appreciate the pull-up diaper. Since we've been home, I think it's fair to say that A's potty trained. She can't pull down her own clothes, pull them back up or reach the sink, but she's got pretty darn good control of her toileting.

But here's the rub: I haven't actually put her in big girl underpants yet. I've shown the dorky hand-me-down training pants to her and she always shakes her head no. Doesn't seem interested. And I'm reluctant to push the issue because I'm just not that excited about cleaning up the eventual accident mess. But the day is coming.

Soon.

Wedding bells ring for all

Today my mom is getting married. And on June 17th (my birthday and my Grandma Lorraine's yahrzeit, incidentally), my cousin Mike and his partner Dave will get married legally in California. They had a Jewish commitment ceremony 10 years ago in Omaha, but they couldn't be issued a marriage license. Now they finally can. Follow their journey on Mike's blog or read about them in their local newspaper.

Happy blogiversary to me

I've been blogging for one year today.

A lot has changed since I wrote my first post. I was on Oprah, I bought a new car, got pregnant, celebrated Z's second birthday and had a second baby. For the first time since we've owned our house, I had the windows washed and the yard landscaped. I traveled to Portland, Omaha, Mexico, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. At the office, I achieved resident expert status on the subjects of word-of-mouth marketing and blogging. And I attended the BlogHer conference and learned how much I still don't know.

I've used my blog to brag about the trials and joys of pregnancy and parenting, but I'd like to think I'm more than "just a mommyblogger." I write about consumer marketing, customer service, and them products and services I love. And I try to do it from my dual perspective as a marketing creative and as a consumer. Because I'm a mom. The consumer with whom brands big and small want to connect.

As a blogger and a mom, I've been given fabulous opportunities, attending the Chicago Auto Show as a guest of GM and reviewing books, DVDs and other products for Parent Bloggers. I even scored a spot on the Chicago Moms Blog!

Most importantly, blogging has connected me with some really wonderful people, mostly women. I've shared the challenges and joys of balancing a career and home life with other working mothers and I've learned a lot from marketing blogs like Seth Godin's.

I love blogging so much I've convinced my best friend and sister to start blogs of their own, and as a result I've benefited from regular peeks inside their lives (and plenty of photos of their kids).

Anyone care to guess what the next year will bring?

My Martini Grandma

That's what my friends call Grandma Lorraine. She earned her nickname for her particular love for martinis--not the trendy vodka 'tinis of my generation, but the old school gin and vermouth martinis. Served in a stem glass. And garnished with olives. Wait staff who got it wrong got it sent back.

She expected a martini at 4pm (cocktail hour), and if you let her have more than one, you'd better stay out of her way. I don't think I ever saw her drunk, but I've seen her get feisty and belligerent about the issues she cared about (she's a fierce defender of liberal politics and Israel).

Grandma Lorraine turns 88 today, but it's looking like this will be her last birthday. She's dying of cancer and has been in and out of hospice care this week.

Growing up, I celebrated most of my birthdays with Grandma L. Our birthdays are only two days apart, and we spent a lot of summers visiting relatives in Omaha. Birthdays with Grandma Lorraine meant dressing up for a restaurant dinner (usually in an over-cooled Italian restaurant with a salad bar) and a shared cake. The parking lots were always blisteringly hot.

I know she's ready to check out, but I can't quite get my head wrapped around the fact that Grandma likely won't meet her latest great-grandchildren. But like the brown cigarettes she used to smoke (were they Mores?), she's forever burned into my memory. And I'll share those memories with my children.

She drove tank-like American cars (although her last car was a Toyota). She favored leisurewear, clip-on earrings and chunky necklaces. Her homes were decorated with original art, which ranged from strikingly contemporary to pop-art to clown sculptures. For many years she rode motorcycles with her husband, my Grandpa Bob. She campaigned for Governor McCarthy and spoke out against the Vietnam war. When Grandpa was dying from prostate cancer, she shocked the preteen me by telling me now much she missed their "very active sex life." After he passed away, she had boyfriends, no easy feat when the women outnumber the men 10 to 1.

She didn't just play bridge, she won at bridge. She kept her brain engaged with crossword puzzles and Sudoku. She was into yoga long before it was trendy, and I doing headstands on beach towels next to her king size waterbed.

Grandma Lorraine wasn't a milk and cookies grandma. In fact, I never liked her cooking. But I have many fond memories of playing cards with her or letting her give me a manicure (she had an enormous toolkit of polishes, files, cuticle potions and lotions).

Happy Birthday, Grandma. And cheers!

Silvermans for Obama

Lovely Lorraine Silverman, how I wish I could fly down to Omaha, pick up a shovel and unearth you today. Then we'd sit down with our gin martinis and our salted cashews and have a really good laugh together.
Grandma, this one's for you. You tracksuit-wearing, oy-swearing, thank G-d far left McGovern supporter, you!

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

My aunt's heart surgery starts at noon

My dear Aunt Susie (regular reader and occasional wacky commenter on this blog) is undergoing a quintuple bypass today at noon in Omaha. She felt some shortness of breath and an ache in her jaw on Monday and fortunately recognized those symptoms as the early signs of a heart attack that her cardiologist said she wouldn't have survived.

Please keep her in your thoughts and take a couple of minutes to educate yourself about heart disease.

Culture shock

I just finished Girl in Translation for the SV Moms book club--likely the last ever as the Silicon Valley Moms Group is sadly closing down the Chicago Moms Blog and its sister sites across the country.

A powerful coming-of-age-in-America story that reads like a memoir, this debut novel from immigrant author Jean Kwok reminded me a bit of the times in my life when I've felt like an outsider looking in, not quite fitting in.

I grew up with my dad in the Foreign Service, and while we spent more time Stateside than many Foreign Service families, I recall clearly our moves to West Berlin midway through my 4th grade year, to Islamabad, Pakistan after 6th grade and my return to the U.S. in the middle of 9th grade. My struggles to navigate my way through new school and make friends are familiar to any kid who had to move around, but they were compounded by the added complexities of a new language and an unfamiliar culture.

It seems trivial comparing my relatively minor struggles to fit in to main character Kimberly Chang's travails in Brooklyn. After all, she has to deal with a huge language barrier, total culture shock and the utter poverty as she fights to win scholarships while working in a sweatshop alongside her widowed mother. But I still remember my return to the U.S. after nearly 6 years abroad. You might think an American teen returning to public high school alongside some of the same kids she left behind in 4th grade would have a fairly seamless transition.

You'd be wrong. I had culture shock. A minor case, no doubt, but culture shock all the same.

Apparently watching a few old episodes of DeGrassi High and listening to a tape my cousin made of an Omaha Top 40 station did not prepare me to be cool in Arlington, Virginia in 1991. I didn't know any of the TV shows on the air. I couldn't name any of the cool bands. I wasn't wearing any of the cool brands. And I had no idea my bangs should be curled, teased and sprayed into gravity-defying sausage rolls. (Besides, trying to catch up was hopeless as I didn't have a curling iron in the right voltage and the drugstore hair care aisle gave me a panic attack.)

I received my book for free as a part of Silicon Valley Moms Group Book Club. See how other moms were inspired by this book here.

Southwest Airlines: I think I'm in LUV

Apparently customer service is not dead, even in the much maligned airline industry. Quite the opposite. You see, on June 18th, Southwest Airlines took a poor customer experience, one which was due to a situation out of their control, and made the best of it. A thunderstorm threatened the Chicago area and air traffic controllers put a stop to all north and westbound flights, including our Chicago to Omaha route. We boarded our plane at 3:15pm for a 3:30 flight, but we ended up sitting on the tarmac for a full three hours.

Now a three hour delay for an 80 minute flight is exceptional, and since I was 36 weeks pregnant and traveling with a 2 1/2 year old to a funeral, it wasn't fun either. But my husband and I appreciated the crew's attitude. Every 15-20 minutes, the pilot would update the passengers on the situation and give us a revised estimate of when he thought we might take off. The flight attendants handed out water, peanuts and pretzels and did their best to entertain the unaccompanied minors across the aisle.

But while the behavior of Southwest employees on 2081 kept me from swearing off flying the discount airline ever again, the letter we received from Southwest has forever cemented my loyalty to the company. You see, they sent us unsolicited apologies along with a $75 travel voucher for each traveler.

Here's an excerpt from the letter, which was dated just three days after the flight:

"[W]e truly regret you had this unfortunate experience, and we would like to have another opportunity to provide you with better memories of Southwest Airlines. In this spirit, I have enclosed a LUV Voucher that we invite you to apply toward the purchase of a future reservation with us. Of course, this goodwill gesture may not offset the total amount of each person's inconvenience, but I hope it will be accepted as our acknowledgement of the frustrations created by this situation."

Did every passenger get this treatment or did we qualify because we're Rapid Rewards members who purchased full price tickets (the only fares available on one day's notice)? I don't know, but I hope we aren't the only ones feeling the love.

And there you have it. Thanks to Southwest's unexpected, authentic gesture, I'm spreading positive word-of-mouth for a company that I could just have easily been complaining about.

Crazy cousins

Z goes bananas with her cousins in Omaha. This went on for at least an hour.



Crazy Cousins on Vimeo

Tornado!

We're in Omaha for a long weekend, and we got a real taste of Nebraska living last night. Around 9pm the tornado warning system went off and the weather reporters began describing "wall clouds" within a couple of miles of my aunt and uncle's house. We woke up Z and took her down into the basement as instructed. Oblivious to the danger, she hopped, skipped and jumped around in front of the weather map (occasionally pointing to the screen and saying, "We're here!" No damage was done nearby, but apparently a funnel cloud touched down about 6 miles away.

The craziest thing was how eerie it was outside. No rain, no audible thunder. Just complete quiet, thick, motionless air and a dull orange sky.